When the Map Runs Out

In the early 1980s, a young American named Paul Farmer traveled to Cange, Haiti — a village perched on the central plateau, so poor and remote it barely appeared on maps. He found families dying of tuberculosis in dirt-floor homes, with no clinic, no clean water, and almost no outside help. Farmer was still a student, yet the suffering he witnessed outstripped anything a classroom could answer.

Rather than retreating to a career where his competence felt sufficient, Farmer stayed in the place where it was not. He co-founded Partners in Health — not from a master plan, but from the stubborn decision to keep showing up to a crisis he could not solve alone.

King Jehoshaphat faced a coalition army of Moabites, Ammonites, and Meunites so vast his scouts lost count. His prayer in 2 Chronicles 20:12 contains no strategy, no battle plan, no clever maneuver: "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You." It is among the most honest prayers in all of Scripture.

There is a kind of faith that only becomes available when competence runs out. When you finally stop pretending you have the answer, your hands open wide enough to receive one. Jehoshaphat discovered what every desperate believer eventually learns — the God who sees our helplessness is never helpless Himself.